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Decision-making under risk of loss in children

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Dufour_2013_PLOSone_Decision.pdf (431.6Kb)
Date
09/01/2013
Author
Steelandt, Sophie
Broihanne, Marie-Helene
Romain, Amelie
Thierry, Bernard
Dufour, Valerie
Keywords
Probability weighting function
Expected value
Gambling task
Preferences
Gratification
Uncertainty
Psychology
Judgments
Adults
Gains
BF Psychology
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Abstract
In human adults, judgment errors are known to often lead to irrational decision-making in risky contexts. While these errors can affect the accuracy of profit evaluation, they may have once enhanced survival in dangerous contexts following a "better be safe than sorry" rule of thumb. Such a rule can be critical for children, and it could develop early on. Here, we investigated the rationality of choices and the possible occurrence of judgment errors in children aged 3 to 9 years when exposed to a risky trade. Children were allocated with a piece of cookie that they could either keep or risk in exchange of the content of one cup among 6, visible in front of them. In the cups, cookies could be of larger, equal or smaller sizes than the initial allocation. Chances of losing or winning were manipulated by presenting different combinations of cookie sizes in the cups (for example 3 large, 2 equal and 1 small cookie). We investigated the rationality of children's response using the theoretical models of Expected Utility Theory (EUT) and Cumulative Prospect Theory. Children aged 3 to 4 years old were unable to discriminate the profitability of exchanging in the different combinations. From 5 years, children were better at maximizing their benefit in each combination, their decisions were negatively induced by the probability of losing, and they exhibited a framing effect, a judgment error found in adults. Confronting data to the EUT indicated that children aged over 5 were risk-seekers but also revealed inconsistencies in their choices. According to a complementary model, the Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT), they exhibited loss aversion, a pattern also found in adults. These findings confirm that adult-like judgment errors occur in children, which suggests that they possess a survival value.
Citation
Steelandt , S , Broihanne , M-H , Romain , A , Thierry , B & Dufour , V 2013 , ' Decision-making under risk of loss in children ' , PLoS One , vol. 8 , no. 1 , e52316 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052316
Publication
PLoS One
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052316
ISSN
1932-6203
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright: © 2013 Steelandt et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
The research was supported by a grant from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-08-412 BLAN-0042-01)
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/5046

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